


It's Hard to Be Vain When No Person Looks At You

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: You see that the plot is predictable, not new-- but you're still stunned at the things you will do.
Relationships: Lt Edward Little/Henry Collins
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	It's Hard to Be Vain When No Person Looks At You

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story and the quote in the summary come from the song, When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way'? by Sparks.  
> This story is based on an original idea by subsequentibis: Edward disguises himself as Collins to steal whiskey for Francis from Erebus, aided by Jopson. It takes place during "First Shot A Winner, Lads", sometime before the climactic scene. I've tried to make it fit the timeline of the episode, but I acknowledge that it may not, in which case... la-di-da.  
> I am not involved in the production of The Terror. No one pays me to do this. This story and the work it's based on are fiction. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

How is Jopson able to hide himself in that way? One could be looking right at him, and still not see him until he shifted or moved in some way designed to get one’s attention. Now, he comes in close to Edward, so close that Edward feels the sudden compulsion to move back, as though it were he who had become immaterial, and Jopson meant to continue on his way, through the space Edward occupies, unimpeded. “I heard what the captain told you,” Jopson says softly, with what could be either sympathy or urgency; it’s difficult to tell in so low a tone of voice.  
Ruefully, Edward smiles. “It’s a fool’s errand.” Edward laughs, adds, “For a fool. I can’t begin to think of how I’m going to undo myself of this task.”  
“No, Lieutenant, you’re going to do it.” The resolution in Jopson’s voice makes Edward frown, actually take a step back from Jopson.  
“What?” is all that Edward can say.  
“You’re going to do it, and I’m going to help you.”  
“And how am I supposed to get into Captain Fitzjames’ storeroom? Mr. Collins has no-doubt already told all. If I so much as take a breath on-board Erebus, Fitzjames will know it.”  
“You’re going to impersonate Mr. Collins.”  
Edward laughs, takes a further step away from Jopson. “What?”  
“There’s a strong enough resemblance,” Jopson says, giving Edward an appraising look. “Beyond that, it’s simply a matter of changing your clothes and the way you wear your hair, adjusting the way you hold yourself. Oh, and you mustn’t speak if you can help it. Mr. Collins has an altogether different way of speaking.”  
“My...” Edward feels himself gaping at Jopson, forces himself to close his mouth. “My… clothes. What am I supposed to do, burgle the man’s wardrobe?”  
“I’ll see to that. Meet me back here in an hour’s time, and we’ll be about it.”  
Edward feels his mouth open again, and claps it shut. He nods. “Yes. Thank you, Jopson.”  
“Think nothing of it,” Jopson says. It sounds like an order. Edward nods, watches Jopson stride away, as though Jopson’s gait or pace or direction will offer some indication as to what Jopson means actually to do. It does not, and so, Edward is left with his curiosity. What will happen? As one watching a play, unconnected to the action yet very much interested in it, he finds that he cannot wait to find out.  
Edward must be mad. Both of them. Both of them must be mad. The pair of them.

Edward holds the jumper in front of him. It has the semblance of having been worn, quite recently. The scent of another person, not unpleasant, but strange, like something pushed in where it doesn’t belong, is on the jumper. Edward frowns. “Where did you get this?”  
“Never you mind about that,” Jopson says, not crossly, but in so firm a tone that Edward begins to fear, ever so slightly, for Mr. Collins’ safety. “Put it on,” Jopson says holding out his arms for Edward’s coat. Feeling himself frown, Edward takes off his coat, delivers it into Jopson’s waiting arms, and puts on the jumper. Then, Jopson, Edward’s coat still over one arm, oddly dexterous, even thus encumbered, busies himself in seeing to the arrangement of Edward’s collar, the parting in Edward’s hair, Jopson’s touch gentle, but unrelenting. It feels very much like being fussed over by a too-attentive aunt. Jopson suddenly grips Edward’s shoulders, pulls them forward slightly, walks around behind Edward, makes another adjustment to Edward’s posture. Perhaps it’s more like being handled by an enterprising sweetheart. Is this how Jopson tends to Captain Crozier? Somehow, it feels untoward to wonder, as though intruding on something private, even if it is only in Edward’s own thoughts. Yet, unbidden, come to Edward’s mind the figures of Jopson and the captain; the former engaged in the smoothing down of the latter’s hair. Smiling, pleased with himself, Jopson runs his hand over the captain’s cheek- “Stand a little less erect,” Jopson says. Edward starts, only just stops himself from exclaiming at being taken from his reverie. “As though you’ve been carrying a weight you’ve only just been allowed to set down.”  
Edward rounds his shoulders slightly more. “Like this?”  
Here, oddly enough, is the expression Edward had imagined. Satisfied, Jopson says, “Much better. Tuck your chin down into your jumper, as though you feel a chill.” As though he were sharing in Jopson’s satisfaction, Edward finds that he gains some strange enjoyment from doing as he’s told. He waits for his next order. It comes: “Let me see you walk.”  
“Walk?”  
“Walk as though you don’t know precisely where you’re going, but you’re in a great hurry to get there.”  
Again, he does as Jopson says.  
Jopson smiles. “You’re a natural.”  
“Do I… do I really look like him?”  
“Enough to fool anyone not willing to inquire.”  
“Why are you doing this?” Edward asks finally. It’s been nagging at him, but he has a suspicion that both question and answer lead someplace perilous.  
“It’s the captain,” Jopson says, as though this should be obvious to Edward. There’s a fierceness to Jopson’s tone that makes Edward wish he’d heeded that internal sense of danger.  
“Yes, of course,” Edward says.  
“When you get to Erebus, look for Mr. Hoar.”  
Edward nods.  
“Off you go,” Jopson says, straightening Edward’s jumper once more. “The sooner you leave, the sooner you can return.”  
Edward swallows. In the bustle of preparation, he’d forgotten his task. “Yes,” he says, his voice coming out somewhat gruffly. Suddenly, he feels a great hesitancy to speak. It’s natural anxiety. Jopson told him that he should try not to speak, that in doing so, he might give himself away. Yet, for the hesitancy, he feels almost a need to speak. “You’re, er, you’re very good to do this,” Edward says. Has his voice always sounded like this? Has it always had this unsure, this wistful tone?  
No, not unsure, not wistful. That isn’t how Edward sounds.  
Now that he’s said the words, he’s not sure why he said them. Jopson has his own reasons for helping Edward, and they couldn’t have less to do with Edward. Yet, he feels a strange pull toward Jopson, warmth in gratitude for having been looked after, if only for the sake of Jopson’s own duty.  
“Off you go,” Jopson says again, more softly.  
Leaving Terror is easy enough. It’s what he’s been ordered to do. Once off of her, though, he begins to feel a strange kind of dread. Though, that’s not exactly uncalled for, Edward thinks bitterly. Danger is all around, in many forms. In addition to the known ones, another suggests itself. Why has it never occurred to Edward that he’s walking on the ocean, that this ice is merely a sheet over open water? A thick sheet, certainly, too thick, which is the very reason for all concern, but a sheet, all the same, lying on top of the depths. An image comes to Edward, suddenly, of a man floating in those depths; a pale shape coming out of the darkness that is as the night sky. Whether he’s alive or dead, Edward can’t say, but the image- no, more than an image, a solid figure- fills him with sudden, immediate horror and panic, and for a moment, he’s not sure whether he’s above- or underwater. He gulps down a breath, feeling as though it might be his last-  
This is absurd. The ice creaks around him, but it doesn’t rupture. It’d be all the better for them if it did rupture, freeing the ships from its grasp. All around him, the wind howls. There’s no surer sign that one is above-water than the wind. If he’s chilled, it’s because the cold is terrible. If he’s anxious, it’s because aside from the peril of being alone on the ice, he’s doing something foolish, and if discovered, will have no choice but to tell some version of the truth, though what that will be, he hasn’t yet decided. Doubtless, it will go badly for him no matter to what extent he involves Jopson or the captain. Perhaps it would go better for him if he didn’t involve them at all. This way, he might still be able to depend upon the captain’s defense.  
The dread comes again, thicker, like a wave of brackish water, all but choking him.  
But then, he’s at Erebus, and he’s boarding the ship, and he’s making his way across the deck and down below, careful to walk in the same manner as Collins, just as careful to avoid being seen. Now, the whole pantomime seems even more absurd than ever: why would he waste precious time taking off his slops? No one will even see the stolen jumper. He begins to fret. He’s going to be found out before he does anything; somehow, his transgressions, aborted though they were, still obvious, plain for all to see. He pulls down his cap, and makes himself press on. Where is Mr. Hoar? Edward looks around, but suddenly can’t remember what the man looks like.  
“Mr. Collins.”  
Edward stops dead, transfixed to the spot. He makes himself turn around slowly, and finds himself face to face with Mr. Bridgens.  
“Yes,” Edward says, turning his chin down toward his collar.  
“Mr. Collins,” Bridgens repeats, “Mr. Hoar told me to ask you to find him when you had a spare moment.”  
“Thank you,” Edward says, looking down and to the side.  
Then, Bridgens is gone.  
It can’t have worked.  
Bridgens’ eyesight must be failing him. Or the light is poor. Or it’s easy enough to confuse one man for another dressed as Edward is.  
Before he can find Hoar, Hoar finds him. “Mr. Collins,” Hoar says too loudly.  
Edward widens his eyes warningly, looks around.  
“Don’t worry,” Hoar says. “You could be his brother.”  
“The storeroom,” Edward says softly.  
“This way,” Hoar says, looking far more pleased about it than he should.  
There wasn’t time to tell others of his plan, so the captain will have to make do with what Edward can carry. It occurs to him too late that he should have made Jopson come with him- but that wouldn’t have done. As whom was Jopson to disguise himself?  
“I’ll see you on your way, Mr. Collins,” Hoar says. And then he is leading Edward as though Edward were a man walking in his sleep, through the ship, then back up. Somehow, no one looks at, no one even seems to see Edward. Just as quickly, Edward is off of the ship, making his way back into the darkness between the ships, clutching the handles of the crate of whiskey as though for dear life-  
By the time he gets back to Terror, his heart is pounding in his throat. As cold as it, he’s sweating. He can feel his hands begin to shake, the bottles rattling against each other.  
“Take this,” he says, all but shoves the crate at Jopson.  
“Well done, Lieutenant,” Jopson says.  
“You can congratulate me after I find a way to get Collins back his jumper.”  
“The worst is over,” Jopson says gently, but his manner only irritates Edward.  
“Go,” Edward says. He doesn’t know what he next means to do, precisely, but the only possibility that suggests itself with any force is lying down on his bed. No one will look for him, he resolves, and makes his way to his quarters. He’s still wearing his slops. Sighing, he turns back, removes a layer of clothing, goes back toward his room. He knows that these things happen, but he hardly seems to feel them. He hardly feels his bed beneath him. He closes his eyes. He’s still wearing Collins’ jumper. The thought fills him with anxiety, almost panic, but he doesn’t move. The jumper is soft, and it’s certainly warm enough. In fact, it seems to give off a heat of its own, stifling, as when one sits for too long too close to a stove. That kind of heat will lull a man to sleep.  
Edward is happy to let it.

At some unknown hour, he wakes, but it’s only to the same dread that has been creeping over him for some time. How long? Hours? Days? Though he knows that it wasn’t always so, he finds it difficult to think of a time when he didn’t feel this way; when he was not lying on this bed, though he knows that it can’t have been that long. He should get up. Sooner or later, the captain will wish to speak to him.  
The captain will not wish to speak to him until he runs out of whiskey again. Then, Edward will almost certainly be sent back to Erebus. Sent back in the white jumper, to pretend once more to be Collins. Perhaps Edward will never again be himself. What, then, will become of Collins? Will he be Edward? If he is Edward, then it will be his task to ferry crates of whiskey from Erebus to Terror, Collins, now Edward, posing as Collins. In taking on another’s identity, Collins will have become himself. Though, Collins reports to Captain Fitzjames, and therefore, unlike Edward, is free. Perhaps the thing for Edward to do is to remain as Collins until the genuine article comes to claim himself. After that, perhaps, Edward will be nobody. The thought is as free and as open as the night sky.  
These thoughts are inane, but not unwelcome. There’s a kind of liberty in simply allowing himself to think them. Yes. He wants to sink into darkness.  
Darkness?  
The lantern is illuminated.  
Light though it is, there is the feeling of darkness, of night. Edward finds that he could sleep, so that is what he does.  
How long has he been asleep? Panic sinks into him, but he feels no compelling reason to move. Something is wrong. He’s unwell. He’s developed whatever mysterious ailment killed those men early in the expedition. It’s been dormant in him this whole time, waiting for the winter, the darkness and greater cold, to fell him.  
He rolls over.  
He sleeps.  
No one has come to look for him. How can this be so? Perhaps he has become Collins, and it doesn’t occur to anyone that he is missing, because he is no longer himself.  
He sits up. Has he lost his mind?  
His brain. It has been effected by the cold.  
He makes himself get out of bed.  
Something happened to him while he was out alone on the waste. A fever, perhaps, was allowed by the cold to disarray his mind, make confetti of his thoughts, his very sense of himself.  
This is what it is, he decides, and begins making his way to the sickbay.  
Dr. MacDonald isn’t there. Edward feels himself sink into a chair.  
“Can I help?” asks Mr. Goodsir.  
“I don’t know. Can you?” That was a foolish way to answer. “I’m sorry,” Edward says. He looks around at the patients in their beds. “Can we speak privately?”  
“I could come to your quarters, perhaps-”  
“I don’t want to go back there,” Edward says, before he can think better of it. His own voice sounds peculiar to his ears, far-away.  
Somewhat helplessly, Goodsir looks around.  
Edward sighs. “I suppose that this will do.”  
“Most of them are sleeping soundly,” Goodsir says, and Edward allows himself to believe it, to be calmed by Goodsir’s words. “What is the matter, Lieutenant?”  
Now that he’s in a position to speak of it, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able. “I feel… strange.”  
“In what way?” Goodsir sits down next to him, sufficiently close that they can speak quietly.  
“My mind feels… disorganized, in a way.”  
“In what way?”  
“I think I may be feverish.”  
“Do you suffer from chills?”  
“No. I feel quite warm.”  
“It’s not surprising that you would, in that heavy jumper. May I?” Holding out his hand, Goodsir stands. Edward leans forward, lets Goodsir place the back of his hand against Edward’s brow. “You don’t feel excessively warm or dry. What are the other symptoms?”  
“I’m tired. It took all my strength to come here.”  
Goodsir frowns. “How long has this been the case?”  
“Only just today. I… had occasion to leave the ship. I think I could have caught a chill. Out there.”  
“Do you feel pain?” Gently, Goodsir moves aside the collar of the jumper, and feels Edward’s neck.  
“No.”  
“Loss of appetite?”  
“Not that I’ve noticed.”  
“Could you lift that up, please?” Goodsir asks, gesturing to the jumper. Edward does, and Goodsir feels his belly, listens to his heartbeat and breathing. “I don’t see any evidence of fever, but you could come back tomorrow, and speak to Dr. MacDonald. He would know better than I.”  
“I think I’m seeing things,” Edward says, finally.  
“In what way?”  
“Things that aren’t there.”  
“Can you give me an example?”  
Edward sighs, and describes to Goodsir the image of the floating man.  
Frowning, Goodsir seems to consider something, then says quietly, “It’s curious, but that reminds me of something that somebody else related to me. I’m bound not to tell you his name or the circumstances, but what you describe was seen by somebody else; though in fact, not as an hallucination.” Goodsir’s frown deepens as he again seems to deliberate. Finally, he asks, “Lieutenant, is this your jumper?”  
Edward laughs. “What does that have to do with anything?”  
“Nothing. Only…” Goodsir looks away for a moment. “It’s probably coincidence.”  
“Please say what you think.”  
Goodsir sighs. “Only that the owner of that jumper, if it is who I believe it to be, is the person who reported seeing what you describe.”  
Now, a chill does come, down the length of Edward’s body. “I see.”  
“I cannot tell you how there comes to be a connection between you and he, but only that this is what I observe.”  
Edward stands. “I see, now.”  
Goodsir frowns. “See what?”  
“What I must do.”  
“Lieutenant-”  
“Thank you, Mr. Goodsir.”  
To spite the hour, Jopson is, as he usually is, everywhere and nowhere, in the corridor, waiting. Does he not sleep? “How did you get this jumper?” Edward whispers.  
Jopson frowns. “Why are you still wearing it?”  
“Never mind that. Who took it from Mr. Collins?”  
“Why do you need to know that?”  
“I need to get it back to Erebus, to Mr. Collins.”  
“It’ll take a while to get a message to Mr. Hoar.”  
“It didn’t take so long the last time.”  
Jopson frowns, begins to say something, but Edward stops him. “I’ll take it back, myself,” Edward says.  
“You shouldn’t go alone. It’s late,” Jopson says.  
“It is late, for you to be showing concern for me.”  
“I’ll go with you,” Jopson says.  
Like that, Edward’s ire is drained from him. He thinks, strangely, of Jopson touching him with familiar concern. It must have been earlier in the day, but it feels very long ago in the past. “No,” Edward says gently, “I’ll be all right by myself.”  
“Are you sure?”  
He feels more softly, still toward Jopson, who is, after all, only engaged in caring for the person Jopson is charged to care for. Jopson is all that he should be. No more, and no less. “I’m sure.”  
Before he puts on his slops, Edward makes sure to take off the jumper. He puts it in a bag, setting it at the bottom with a kind of finality. He sets off, across the ice. No figure drifts out to him in the dark. Nothing ruptures. The water remains unspilled. As befits the hour, Erebus is quiet. All the better for Edward, as there’s still the matter of the whiskey hanging over his head.  
Perhaps not his head. All who saw him aboard took him for Collins. Without examining the merits of the statement, Edward knows it to be true. Nor does he examine the ease with which he finds Collins’ quarters, thankfully empty, to spite the hour. He takes the jumper from the bag, and lays it across the bed. He turns around.  
Jopson was right about the set of Collins’ shoulders.  
“So, it was you,” Collins says, but he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds curious, almost amused.  
There’s no point in lying; or, if there is, Edward is merely sick of doing it. “Yes. I had to… be you, for a while,” he says apologetically. “Please don’t ask me why.”  
Collins only smiles a little, looking suddenly so sad that Edward is physically taken aback. He begins to ask why Collins looks this way, but Collins speaks first: “You can be me a little bit longer, if you want to.”  
“But who would you be, then?” Edward asks.  
“Nobody, I suppose. Perhaps, nothing at all.”  
“That sounds a bit like being dead,” Edward says, with a sense of caution he can’t place.  
“Perhaps.”  
Edward picks up the jumper from Collins’ bed, holds it out to him. “Here,” Edward says gently.  
Collins looks down at the jumper, then back up at Edward. “I’m not cold at the moment,” Collins says, but then, sighing, takes the jumper from Edward. Collins takes off his coat. Edward should leave Collins, but he stays where he is. He watches Collins raise the jumper, his head disappearing into it briefly, before emerging again. His hair is disarrayed. Before he can stop himself, Edward smooths down Collins’ hair. With a kind of embarrassment, he thinks of Jopson arranging him earlier. If it had felt out of place for Jopson to touch him in that way, it’s because it was. Edward is no more the captain than he is Collins. Edward doesn’t want to be either of them, knowing now, as he does, without having really examined the question, that both are bearing burdens that Edward dreads to consider. The captain’s is obvious, and though it feels traitorous to do it, Edward finds that he pities the captain. He cannot even begin to guess what it is for Collins, but he feels great sympathy for Collins. Beyond even sympathy, he feels, he finds, very close to Collins. Having already ventured this much, he places his hand on Collins’ cheek. Collins holds it there.  
“If you’d like, you can stay for a moment,” Collins says.  
Before he can think better of it, Edward nods. It’s for the first time that Edward has a clear understanding of how Collins looks, and how he, himself, looks. In seeing Collins, he may, it seems, see himself. He and Collins have the same color hair, the same color eyes, share a sketchy resemblance, but there, the similarity ends. There is a different shape to the face, the nose, the chin. Collins’ brow. Collins’ mouth.  
They come together, as close as a man and his reflection in a mirror, only the piece of glass separating them. If one were to remove the glass, would it only be one man, on his own, or would it be two men, regarding each other? If it were two men, what would each man feel at suddenly being thus confronted by the other? Disgust, a kind of seasick closeness, at suddenly seeing himself as others see him? Or, perhaps, sadness, a kind of regret, in meeting, after having been apart for so long? Perhaps, it wouldn’t be sadness, but gladness, as at reuniting with an old friend at long last.  
Though, of course, there is no glass, because there is no reflection. They are, and have always been, two different men. The earlier illusion has been ruptured, and Edward knows who he is, and he knows who Collins is. He feels Collins breathe, feels his heart beat. He feels the warmth of Collins’ body, the flush to his skin beneath Edward’s hand. Collins’ mouth against his is soft. The feeling of Collins, all of the feelings of him, are welcome. The mirror is broken or has been taken away- no, Edward reminds himself, it never existed, but what is there is the last one of the things that it might have left behind for the two men now no longer separated. Gladness.


End file.
